Psychology Exam 2

Which of the following refers to a strategy that is used to simplify decision-making, sometimes at the cost of logic and rationality?

A heuristic

arousal theory

A theory of motivation suggesting that people are motivated to maintain an optimal level of alertness and physical and mental activation.

According to the ----- Theory, cultural factors shape how people ideally want to feel (their "ideal affect") whereas temperamental factors shape their actual affect

Affect Valuation

Owen is writing a paper about how the attitudes, values, and beliefs of culture influence development in children. What would be the best title for his essay?

Child Development according to Lev Vygotsky

With regard to the validity of Piaget's theory of cognitive development, which criticism would be the most accurate?

Children's cognitive development seems to be more continuous than Piaget proposed

Matthew is too warm on his hike so he takes off his sweatshirt. As it gets breezier, he puts his sweatshirt back on. Matthew's attempt to maintain a stable internal temperature is called:

Homeostasis

Bounded self-interest

Humans are often willing to sacrifice their own interests to help others

Bounded willpower

Humans often take actions that they know to be in conflict with their own long-term interests

Uninvolved

Low warmth; low control

Nature refers to the biological endowment, including the genes a person receives from his or her parents, while ---- refers to the environmental influences that impact a person's development.

Nurture

Why is an Ostrich not considered to be a typical bird?

Ostriches do not fly and they run on land

A penguin is a bird, but if you asked people to name 10 birds, few would include the penguin. Why?

Penguins are atypical birds

Piaget's state theory of cognitive development suggests that a child's thinking is fundamentally different--more advanced--in each stage than it was on the previous stage. This demonstrates the concept of:

Qualitative change

Millie's parents respond to her in a sensitive manner, reinforcing her belief that they can be relied upon in times of need. As a result, Millie is most likely to develop a ------ attachment.

Secure

Types of attachment

Secure attachment, ambivalently attached, avoidantly attached, unattached

The ----- hypothesis suggests that humans have developed larger brains in order to better maintain large in-groups

Social brain

In today's society, people are often very busy--especially executives--causing them to trust certain ways of thinking over others. However, the can lead to many biases and make poor decisions. Which of the following is the best way to reduce bias and improve decisions?

Stop trusting system 1 and instead engage system 2 more

This kind of decision-making is slower, conscious, effortful, explicit, and logical

System 2

During which stage of Piaget's model of cognitive development are children believed to begin to become more capable of symbolic thinking?

The Pre-operational Reasoning Stage

Which laboratory procedure, designed to assess attachment styles in children, involves exposing a child to separation from their caregiver followed by a reunification?

The Strange Situation

Bounded ethicality

The systematic ways in which our ethics are limited in ways we are not even aware of ourselves.

Why do children attach to their parents?

Theory 1: Source of food Theory 2: Source of comfort Monkey experiment proved: baby monkeys preferred comfort

Rachel's mother takes her to the pediatrician for her 1-year checkup. Rachel is very friendly towards everyone she meets in the waiting room; she didn't show any reaction when her mother left her in the room nor upon her mother's return. According to Ainsworth, these are indicators that Rachel is:

Unattached

According to Baumrind, the ----- parenting style is marked by low expectations and control combined with low warmth and low responsiveness.

Uninvolved

Which statement BEST reflects the James-Lange theory of emotion?

We see a monster, our hearts race, we feel fear

stimulus motive

a motive that appears to be unlearned but causes an increase in stimulation, such as curiosity

extrinsic motivation

a person performs an action because it leads to an outcome that is separate from us

intrinsic motivation

a person performs an action because the action is fun, challenging, or satisfying in an internal manner

temperament

a person's characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity (biological disposition) temperament + experience = personality

drive

a psychological tension and physical arousal arising when there is a need that motivates the organism to act in order to fulfill the need and reduce the tension

Need

a requirement of some material (such as food or water) that is essential for survival of the organism

longitudinal design

a research design in which one participant or group is studied over a long period of time

self-determination theory

a theory of motivation that is concerned with the beneficial effects of intrinsic motivation and the harmful effects of extrinsic motivation

A letter from a charity requests a donation. It asks if you would donate $100, $50, $25 or some other amount. The first, larger numbers provides a(n) ----- from which you will adjust your donation.

anchor

How are concepts mentally represented according to prototype theory?

as a set of weighted features

drive-reduction theory

assumes behavior arises from physiological needs that cause internal drives to push the organism to satisfy the need and reduce tension and arousal

Parenting styles

authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, uninvolved

preconventional

avoidance of punishment

Decision-making and judgment research has been applied to which of the following fields outside the area of psychology?

behavioral marketing

According to the ______ rationality framework, human beings try to make rational decisions, but our cognitive limitations prevent us from being fully rational.

bounded

Which of the following is NOT one of the components of the theory of bounded rationality that has been contributed to by different researchers over the past two decades?

bounded attributions

----- refer to the culturally determined rules about what emotions are appropriate to show in given situations

display rules

Importance of fit

does the environment match the child?

Which of the following is consistent with the concept behind drive-states?

drinking a glass of water after a long hike

According to the research of Langlois and colleagues (1995) and van den Boom and Hoeska (1994), infants who are ------- tend to get more affectionate care from their parents. This has been found to contribute to their later cognitive development.

easygoing and attractive

Vgotsky's theory

emphasizes how culture and social interaction guide cognitive development

Smoking Brand A carries an 80% chance of developing lung cancer while smoking Brand B carries a 20% chance of not developing lung cancer. Even though the outcomes are the same, the ----- can affect the decisions that people make

framing

The cognitive representation of a desired state or outcome is called a(n):

goal

Addison believes he can get into the local state college and desperately wants to attend. Taken together, his value of the goal and his expectation that he can achieve it show up as:

goal commitment

information processing theory

gradual learning

Authoritative

high control, high warmth

Permissive

high warmth, low control

The tendency of an organism to maintain a stable state across all the different physiological systems in the body is called:

homeostasis

social understanding

how kids react broadly with the social world 1. relationships are essential 2. early forms of social understanding 3. observation and explanation (blank face experiment)

cohort effect

impact on development when a group of people share common time period or life experience

preoperational stage

in Piaget's theory, the stage (from about 2 to 6 or 7 years of age) during which a child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic

sensorimotor stage

in Piaget's theory, the stage (from birth to about 2 years of age) during which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities

concrete operational stage

in Piaget's theory, the stage of cognitive development (from about 6 or 7 to 11 years of age) during which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events

formal operational stage

in Piaget's theory, the stage of cognitive development (normally beginning about age 12) during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts

conventional

in line with accepted ideas or standards (law and order)

Hunger

in the Hypothalamus

Braden is a member of the guitar club at his college, and attends meetings on a weekly basis. People who are members of Braden's group would be an example of a(n) ------ while those in the "other" club (The Drum Society) are a(n) outgroup

ingroup

Primary drives

involve needs of the body such as hunger and thirst

Yerkes-Dodson Law

law stating performance is related to arousal; moderate levels of arousal lead to better performance than do levels of arousal that are too low or too high. This effect varies with the difficulty of the task: Easy tasks require a high-moderate level whereas more difficult tasks require a low-moderate level

Acquired drives

learned through experience or conditioning, such as the need for money or social approval

Authoritarian

low warmth, high control

Scaffolding

process in which a more skilled learner gives help to a less skilled learner, reducing the amount of help as the less skilled learner becomes more capable (Zone of Proximal Development)

System 1

quick instinct

System 2

rationale

cross-sequential design

research design in which participants are first studied by means of a cross-sectional design but also followed and assessed for a period of no more than six years

cross-sectional design

research design in which several different age groups of participants are studied at one particular point in time

----- value referee to a neuropsychological measure of an outcome's affective importance to an organism

reward

Although Sheldon wants to go to a book reading, he opts to go to a play with his girlfriend. She would not be upset if she went to the play alone. Sheldon's willingness to (unnecessarily) sacrifice for his girlfriend demonstrates that ----- is bounded.

self-interest

Paiget's Stages of Cognitive Development

sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, formal operational

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

several levels of need a person must strive for before reaching self-actualization

postconventional

social contract and universal ethical principle

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is the notion that the language a person speaks or the linguistic practice can:

strongly influence the thoughts they can have

While traveling to Canada from his home in Europe, Gunther often asks people, "Excuse me, can you please the time tell me?" Even though people understand what he is asking and politely tell him the time, Gunther is incorrectly using:

syntax

Emotional Development

temperament and attachment

external locus of control

the belief that once does not have control over outcomes, but they are controlled by outside forces

internal locus of control

the belief that you control your own destiny

attachment

the emotional bond between an infant and the primary caregiver (secure, avoidant, ambivalent, or disorganized)

discontinuous development

the idea that changes with age include occasional large shifts, like the transition from caterpillar to cocoon to butterfly

Some brain mechanisms that regulate sexual behavior are similar in males and females, but one distinctly male characteristic is that the brain areas important for sexuality overlap to a great extent with those brain areas are connected to:

the preoptic area

Motivation

the process by which activities are started, directed, and continued so that physical or psychological needs or wants are met

cybernetic process

the process that describes that the human cortex functions much like a computer, receiving, storing, processing, and retrieving information

Heuristics

thinking shortcuts

As a drive state intensifies, attention is directed toward certain elements to ensure the fulfillment of that drive. What is one form of narrowing of attention that occurs during this time?

turning one's focus inward

If psychology is the science of behavior, then the ------ of language must be one its most central topics, since it exists for almost all human beings

use

continuous development

view that development is a cumulative process: gradually improving on existing skills ex: watching a tree grow

The ----- model describes how financial difficulties are associated with parents' depressed moods, which can cause problems with their children's adjustment.

Family Stress

Davina attends school regularly and has made great strides in her understanding of material in her science classes. Being able to reason more like a mature adult, Davina is in which of Piaget's developmental stages?

Formal Operational

Chase is a baby with a slow-to-warm-up temperament. When his parents take him to a new environment (e.g. a new friend's house), they let him have time to adjust and don't force him to interact too quickly. This match between Chase's temperament and his environment is called:

Goodness of Fit

Cognitive strategies that simplify decision-making by using mental short-cuts are called------. They are sometimes referred to as "rules or thumb".

Heuristics

The systematic ways in which our ethics are limited in ways we are not even aware of ourselves is called:

bounded ethically

Anna is telling Joy all about Maya's recent engagement. Because they share _______________, Anna assumes that Joy knows a little about Maya and George and doesn't need to tell about who they are. If Anna were speaking to someone else, she may need to include more details.

common ground

If a boy believed that the only variable that affected the distance a ball traveled when thrown was the force with which it was thrown and then conducted a biased "experiment" that proved his assumption which developmental phenomenon according to Piaget is involved?

concrete operations

The first of two basic stages of self-regulation, called the ------ phase, sees an individual deciding which of many potential goals to pursue at a given point in time.

deliberative

Dweck's Theory

our beliefs about our self can affect the way we behave, particularly when it comes to our need foe achievement

Marissa believes that even 30 years after graduation she will be able to name 250 of the 300 students in her graduating class. Later, she is only able to correctly identify 75. This reflects her ----- in her own skill.

overconfidence

Kohlberg's stages of moral development

preconventional, conventional, postconventional

Bounded Awareness

when we make decisions we are not aware of everything

According to Thaler (2000), decision-making is affected by the fact that ----- is bounded; we give greater weight to present concerns than we do to future concerns.

willpower

You are walking in the forest and see a bear. According to the Cannon-Bard theory, what happens next?

you experience physiological changes and a feeling of fear simultaneously